Infrastructuring STEAM Learning: Building Interconnected STEAM Learning Infrastructure for Preservice Teachers and K-12 Students

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This design-based implementation research project sought to understand and improve science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) learning infrastructure for K-12 students and preservice teachers in one local ecosystem in the Midwestern United States.Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and infrastructuring, we analyze the process of creating a STEAM workshop series for preservice teachers and an elementary afterschool STEAM club, co-facilitated by these preservice teachers.We identify specific elements of higher education and K-12 infrastructure that supported or impeded implementation. Background and objectivesIn recent years, there has been a push away from conceptualizing and structuring STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) as a set of siloed disciplines and toward integrated-STEM or STEAM (STEM plus arts/design) instruction (Bybee, 2010; ITEA, 2007; NGSS Lead States, 2013).However, for integrated-STEAM instruction to be facilitated effectively, educators need preparation.Most preservice teachers (PSTs) don't receive practical exposure to STEAM tools or teaching methods.As a result, they lack understanding of what STEAM is, why it is important, and how best to teach it (Portz, 2015).There are few formal STEAM curricula, and those that do exist are often expensive.This means that to teach STEAM, teachers need to design their own lessons.This takes time they are rarely afforded and understanding and interest they have not had opportunities to build (Estapa & Tank, 2017).Thus, educational infrastructure must be considered.Penuel (2019) proposed ten elements of infrastructure that influence K-12 education: (1) teacher professional learning; (2) standards; (3) curriculum materials; (4) assessments; (5) instructional techniques and routines; (6) building-and district-level policies; (7) school schedules; (8) instructional support roles and positions; (9) organizational routines; and (10) personnel evaluation systems.We propose three more: (A) technology tools and materials; (B) formalized goals and strategic priorities; and (C) physical spaces.We also argue that higher education brings its own system of infrastructure.To address these elements of infrastructure, Penuel (2019) proposed infrastructuring as a form of design research involving the creation of tools to improve practice, develop theory, and build knowledge (Edelson, 2002), focusing on creating conditions for educators to make innovations into working infrastructures.We use this approach to improve STEAM education for PSTs and K-12 students based on our understanding of infrastructural supports and barriers.We draw on prior approaches to educator learning that attend to infrastructure, including research on engaging PSTs as facilitators of the Fifth Dimension afterschool program (Cole, 2009; Cole & The Distributed Literacy Consortium, 2006) and research on the design and implementation of STEAMbassadors, a professional learning program for community college students to become out-of-school time (OST) STEAM mentors (Pinkard et al., 2021).We integrate these approaches by engaging PSTs in learning to facilitate STEAM through participation in workshops and co-facilitation of a STEAM afterschool club.In doing so, we have two objectives: (1) better understand infrastructural supports and barriers to STEAM for PSTs and K-12 students; and(2) design and test a model to prepare PSTs to facilitate STEAM while providing K-12 STEAM opportunities. Method Design: The beginningTo create the conditions for STEAM learning through infrastructuring, our project aims to redesign existing systems to generate effective and sustainable "working infrastructures for organizing learning activities" (Penuel, 2019, p. 2) in both K-12 and higher education.This took the form of a Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) project (Penuel et al., 2011).We attended to elements of existing infrastructure in making the design adaptive to local constraints as we also sought to understand those constraints.In collaboration with K-12 and higher education practitioners, we engaged in multiple cycles of iterative refinement, informed by data.When the first and second author started this project, we had just been hired as a faculty member and makerspace facilitator,